Saturday, January 16, 2010

Constructor: Ned White

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HYSON (61A: A caddy may hold it) —

Hyson or Lucky Dragon Tea is a Chinese green tea that comes from the Anhui Provence of China. It is made from young leaves that are thinly rolled to have a long, twisted appearance that unfurls when brewed. The name Hyson is likely a Chinese name meaning "flourishing spring" or "blooming spring," emerging between 1730-40 in the Chinese dialect Guangdong as "héichēun". However, some believe it to have been named after an English tea merchant, Phillip Hyson. Hyson is graded into the following three categories: Mi Si, Cheng Si and Fu Si.

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One of the best puzzles of the week, which is not saying much, I realize. It's just fine — an incredibly typical Saturday: felt hard at first, contained many clues and answers unfamiliar to me, but came together in fits and starts. Nothing nothing, spate of answers, nothing nothing, another spate. Neither of the crossing 15s were immediately familiar to me. That is, I've heard of both, but could see neither from their given clues. SKITTLES are nothing but candy to me, but once I got the -TLES part, the phrase BEER AND SKITTLES (36A: A bowl of cherries, in Chelsea) came to mind as "something British I don't really understand." Wrote it in tentatively and it held. Also solved "The MOON AND SIXPENCE" (8D: 1919 novel set in Paris and Tahiti, with "The") from the back end (puzzle in general went NE, SE, SW, NW), though even after getting the "SIXPENCE" part, I had to struggle a bit to remember the rest (possibly because I'd written in DOWNY where TAWNY was supposed to go at 26A: Like the coats of 25-Down — you know, because of all the DOWNY PUMAS I've seen in movies). Last square was the "L" in SUL / LPN (29D: Orderly supervisor, maybe: Abbr.). Knew that SUR was "south in Spanish, and nearly convinced myself that there was such a thing as a Registered Practical Nurse, but the "Brazil" part of 28A: South of Brazil? made me change my mind. If it were SUR, the clue would not have gone Portuguese. So though I'd never heard of SUL, I went with it.

Started with -ETH (5D: End of the Bible?) and got nowhere in the NW. Knew that the album involved ARETHA, but though I got ARETHA to fit in the first part, I couldn't think (Think!) of a word to follow. Only much later did I get the full "ARETHA NOW" (17A: 1968 soul album with the hit "Think"). Rebooted in NE with the sweet gimme AMBOY (9D: The ___ Dukes (1960s-'70s band)) — no idea who this band is, but "The AMBOY Dukes" is a classic novel by Irving Shulman — classic to vintage paperback collectors, at any rate. I gratefully took AMBOY and used it to destroy the NE in a matter of seconds — except CATAWBAS (13D: Carolina natives) — what the !?

Sent BEER AND SKITTLES across, tentatively, but then went down to the SE, where I anagrammed an initially wrong answer (ASPCA) to get a right answer (ASCAP) (46A: Org. that tracks numbers), and then, with help of A LA (53A: Mimicking), proceeded to make relatively short work of that quadrant. Needed a little help from ED HARRIS in the west (34D: Jackson Pollock's player in "Pollock"), but I got those SE answers surrounded and solved with little problem. Once I changed DOWNY to TAWNY, the top opened up. TWO WEEKS (15D: What an angry employee might give a boss) gave me the "W" I needed to get "ARETHA NOW," and the NW fell from there. Then there was the exceedingly easy SW, where only HYSON (61A: A caddy may hold it) gave me any pause, and by the time I saw it, the whole section was filled in and I knew it had to be right.

Bullets:

1A: One very concerned with how a kid acts (stage mom) — just saw this answer somewhere else. I had GOATHERD at first.

14A: Plant disease similar to blackleg (potato rot) — BLACKLEG would have been a Lot harder to get.

16A: Comic actress who co-starred on "Archie Bunker's Place" (Meara) — also just saw this clue / answer somewhere else. In crosswords, Ms. MEARA is usually clued as part of the comedy team MEARA and Stiller. Or is it Stiller and MEARA? Whatever, they're great.

35A: Limerick scheme (AABBA) — wondered if I knew the word for "scheme" in Gaelic ...

6D: Evidence of paranormal activity, perhaps (moan) — uh, no. No. A MOAN is "evidence" of no such thing.

7D: Speculation follower ("... or not.") — I had "...MAYBE."

11D: Dance based on bullfight music (paso doble) — a gimme, but ... it's sloppy to have essentially the same word in two different answers. PASO = "step" and "PAS" = "step" (from PAS DE, 49D: ___ bourée (ballet move)).

32D: Entrepreneur's request (seed money) — like it. Don't like the word "entrepreneur," as a. people use it in stupid, pretentious ways all the time, and b. it's creepy to type – it's got 16 Es and 22 Rs and just goes on and on monotonously.

41D: Kenyan leader Mboya whom Obama called his "godfather" (Tom) — really? That's your clue for TOM? Gotta say, I was not expecting such an apple pie answer. I've literally Never heard of this person. Of course, I never read Obama's book (the "Dreams" one), which I'm guessing is where Obama "called" TOM his "godfather."

44D: Biblioteca Ambrosiana locale (Milan) — no idea, but had the "MI-" so no problem.

47D: Sportscaster with the autobiography "Holy Cow!" (Caray) — as in Harry CARAY, the late Cubs broadcaster.

95
comments:

I don't keep times, but this had to be my fastest Saturday ever. Started after Leno's monologue - finished before 11pm. Not a speed solver (obviously), but I'm sure I never cracked the one hour barrier for a Saturday before this.

Rex, thanks for admitting to GOATHERD - I thought I was going to be the only one to do that. Agreed that the NW was the trouble spot in this one. I would have rated it easy except for that corner.

CATAWBA only means "wine I would never drink" to me, but it made sense. Rolled around quickly from the NE back to the pesky NW. Wanted Rizzuto for CARAY. Tried wears for HASON. I should have known ENDRHYME, but oddly wanted END to be BAD for some strange reason.

I've quoted Wodehouse here before, and the same entry on my blog I took those quotes from has a few (THE) MOON AND SIXPENCE quotes as well. Doesn't mean I got this answer quickly, just that I should have.

BEER AND SKITTLES, I guessed from BxxRANDSKITTLES.

Started with PAL for 1948, but the UN Partition plan was actually late '47. Started with TIN for #26, but Élément ain't English. Started with NIE for Nietzsche, as did Nietzsche.

Rex, @Dave: love that you tried GOATHERD and it fit. My limiting myself to NYT puzzles of late led me to STAGEMOM immediately.Really appreciated the clues in this puzzle, Mr. White, especially those for STAMPEDE and SEEDMONEY.The fill, too, was fresh: MORPH, POTATOROT, TEARDROPS, PASODOBLE.Maybe limiting myself to the NYT is what keeps the puzzle fresh for me, though we often have noted bleeding from one day to the next.

I finished with two errors. SUD being "south" in Spanish...I decided it might be the same in Portuguese, and never went back to check the cross. TSK. And album names...just below sports teams, car models, and celebrity high jinks in my list of interests; I might have figured out ARETHA if I had spent more time trying to parse 17A.

PUMAS ...aren't they nearly extinct? and do they really stalk deer? I kept trying to come up with HAT synonyms for "Deer stalker," a la Sherlock Holmes.

@MsCarrera, yes....as soon as I saw __PIC there was a distinct impulse to shudder. ASPIC!!! Curse you, Ned White!

I found this to be pretty easy for a Saturday. I threw in Stagemom with no crosses. Then held myself up in the NW by entering GUN instead of GAT. Marched around the rest of the grid, rethought my weaponry and was done.

I will never understand cockney rhyming phrases as nothing in the seed phrase or the new one seems to rhyme with anything else. Just took it on faith when the crosses looked right.

Lots of nice stuff in here - seed money, score card (who knew there were multiple spellings for caddy??) stampede. I'm already over the plant disease of the day -- hope that's not the start of a trend.

The beauty of doing the puzzle on paper is that you can finish with everything looking good and think you have it licked, Easy-Medium.

The problem with reading Rex's write-up is that you find you finished with two mistakes!

Had SUR for SUL (don't speak either Spanish or Portuguese, and certainly RPN is as valid a nurse as LPN, although I don't know the pecking order.)

I was going to report 51 A as one of my write-overs, since I went from I DREAM to IF REAL, and never got to the correct I'M REAL (J.Lo albums are as foreign to me as Kenyan leaders, and surely TOF sounded more exotic than the pedestrian TOM!)

I believe "Chelsea" was just a tip to think British, not Cockney. Obviously, BEER AND SKITTLES is not a rhyming phrase, just one that is used in the same way that we Americans might use, "Life right now is a bowl of cherries," or "He's rolling in clover," and so forth.

Oddly, STAGE MOM came to me at once, too. Then I thought, "Nah," and was surprised when ultimately it dropped in.

My apologies - I forgot to click the "Email follow-up comments . . . " box the first time around. Does anyone know how in the future I could get on the list in such a situation without posting a superfluous note like this?

I began with STAGE MOM, then took it out as it wasn't getting me anywhere up top! ASPIC and AMBOY took care of the whole NE, though.

I meandered down the east coast and had that nailed soon too, then worked out all the SW easily with SEED MONEY to start with, and that led up to MILAN and US ARMY for the next footholds. The herd driver's problem STAMPEDE was a hoot.

MORPH was awesome, and it gave me the PENCE for the long 8D, and MOM back in place with MOAN attached, then NONONO. Meanwhile, BEER --- TTLES left Bottles out, AND SKITTLES in, so + couldn't be POS. TWO WEEKS was neat too, after I gave up Him for HIS.

Finally back where I started, STAGE went back in with MOM, with SPASM and other downs revealing POTATO ROT and ARETHA NOW. Whew, done!

Looking back, I liked the dance steps and Carolina CATAWBAS, AABBA and END RHYME, TAWNY PUMAS, and the two canny Caddy clues. STA for abbr. Boarding house? Groaner!

Because I had upseT for ATE AT I was stuck in a spot as thick as ASPIC. Even with NOW in place I couldn't see ARETHA through that errant "S." So I Googled the album and immediately corrected my mistake and finished: tada!

Not. I had an error at SUd. Well, hasn't everybody heard of a Designated Practical Nurse?

I enjoyed the puzzle. My misstep was putting in TWO CENTS for what an angry employee might give a boss. Didn't last too long. TWO WEEKS is what a really angry employee might give a boss! I first learned the term PASO DOBLE at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament several years back from Mel Rosen (constructor) who was taking dance lessons with his wife. Some learn new words from earlier crosswords, I learned this one directly from a crossword constructor!

Could not parse 3D as ATE AT. Guessed the STN/STA ambiguity @ 19A as the N. Boo to me. My bad.

South in German/French is SUD, Spanlsh SUR, Portuguese SUL. I went with the R, not knowing the Portuguese until I looked it up.

Other than these two errors I had a good (if slow) time). What Rex said about the solving experience. Solid Saturday fare.

Anybody else try BER(lin) or ISR(ael) @ 50A?

Missed the accents in the 57A clue and had a terrible time thinking of 3 letter elements in English. Put TIN,figuring a cross would either confirm or eliminate it. It hung around far too long. rethinking the SE, I did a count up from argon (#18) and got to iron. Still didn't see the accents. Got to FE_ and the light dawned. Elaine, where is that ASPIC?

Got BEERANDSKITTLES thanks to a misspent boyhood listening to the Dr. Demento radio show. He would often play Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," which begins: "Spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles, life is beer..."

Don't know why I associate the Amboy Dukes with Bruce Springsteen. I know the Stone Pony in Asbury Park was the bar he'd play at a lot in his early days. Maybe I am just mixing up my A___Y words.

Rex is right, SUD is French for south. The French chef Paul Bocusse has a restaurant called Le Sud in either Lyon or Avignon, one of the cities south of Paris... ate there in 1997.

Having never heard of BEERANDSKITTLES nor MOONANDSIXPENCE, those weren't AHA moments for me. I had to google MEARA cause I was looking for Jean Stapleton (never saw the other) and A DRY White Season, cause these two corners killed me.

Thanks, and yes, always consider the "-AE" ending for the Latin plurals for fem. ("-A"-ending nouns) — except in this case, SEPTA is already a plural (of neuter SEPTUM), and AORTAS is not in the puzzle (is it? ... I could just be missing it). Did you mean ATRIA? (also a plural of neuter Latin noun)

We all seem to be on the same wavelength today. I knew beer and skittles, though I'd forgotten it was part of a Tom Lehrer song. Hand up for goatherd - although I liked the show way more than ever to call it the Sound of Mucus! Good, fun puzzle.

@ArtLvr - Yeah, you sissified city folk, with your high falutin' dictionaries may think that's amusing. I invite y'all to meet me and my boys at the old hangin' tree just south of Sedalia where we'll discuss how amusin' y'all think it is to make fun of us. My ramrod Rowdy is particulary interested in meeting y'all. It'll make his day.

@Urban XworderThe superior and inferior vena cavae are veins (which carry blood back to the heart) versus arteries, such as the AORTA, (the great vessel that arches over and carries oxygenated blood out of the heart to the lower body.) My question (MDs, please step in here): don't the vena cavae carry blood to the RIGHT ATRIUM only? The blood enters the right ventricle, is pumped to the lungs for oxygenation, then enters the left atrium, then the left ventricle, and is then pumped out of the heart to the body. If the vena cavae are sending blood to both ATRIA, there must be an atrial septal defect, eh?

@Rex

How can I mix up Spanish and French when I don't speak any French? @#$%^&*! HS Spanish classes....too long ago. Sorry!

Nice satisfying Saturday solve.I'm no speed solver because I like to savor my experience and this one did the trick.My worst slow-down was having rotten tomatoes for awhile.@ Bob Kerfuffle, There are no RPNs.I knew the south clue would start with SU and just waited for the L to appear.I'm glad hyson was the wotd because I had no idea.For the sonnet clue I also considered bad or odd for my rhyme but only to amuse myself.Hand up for trying goatherd.

I've spent countless hours trying to convince editors to use the plain old English plural "-s" for Latin terms that are fully naturalized into the English language. My particular pet peeve is "serum." In Latin, the plural would be "sera." That's fine, when used as the plural, but somehow the term has morphed into an all-purpose designation. It's amazing how many so-called educated people (those who submit material to medical journals!) use "sera" as a singular, eg, "this sera did not cause a reaction." If everyone said (or wrote) "one serum" and "two serums" the sera-as-singular abomination would wither away.

@imsdave - I invite you to check out the Wikipedia page on Catawbas. So that you can understand that this once mighty tribe (who fought with us in the American revolution), is much more than a "wine you would never drink"!

Good puzzle! I had to google Hyson because it didn't seem right. Wadiya know? It's a tea:and I still have my grandfather's tea caddy as well. STAMPEDE was an aha! as was PUMA.

@Elaine

Pumas,or Cougars as we call them north of the border, are far from extinct in the west.They range from California to Alaska and attacks on people and pets are fairly common.They normally feed on deer: about one a week, i hear. Grand cat!Cougars seek a different prey in America.Thanks for the medical info. I didn't know that.A nit to pick. Normally the caddy has nothing to do with the score card. Keeping score is the player's responsibility.

@Two Ponies - I don't claim any knowledge of the nursing profession, b ut according to Wikipedia:

Licensed practical nurseFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Registered Practical Nurse)

Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) are also known as licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) in California and Texas and as registered practical nurses (RPNs) in Ontario, Canada. They are called enrolled nurses (ENs) in Australia and New Zealand and as state enrolled nurses (SENs) in the United Kingdom.

I tapdanced through the South, starting with JLo's IMREAL. I'm not a big fan of her music myself but my granddaughter is. I had PENCE in place and thought of Maugham. I wonder if I hadn't uncovered what I saw as an English sub-theme if I would have come up with BEERANDSKITTLES?

I funneled toward the NW in fairly short order but had a problem cracking POTATOROT until I saw SPASM. It's funny how one answer can hold up an entire quadrent but that is what happened here with 3D.

I'm sure you see a lot of mangled prose as an English professor, but for mangled prose of truly striking pomposity, you can't beat scientific publications. To be fair, I must acknowledge that journals are a LOT better than they used to be.

@imsdave - well they were vaguely familiar to me only as a word, so I went to Wiki, and learned more about them. For what its worth, I'm sure my ancestors weren't so nice to them either, which saddens me.

On a lighter note, I will say that pink Catawba from the Finger Lakes does sound kind of hideous - not a wine snob, but since I don't like zinfandels to begin with....

This one took a vorpal blade to my butt. The fact that I started—and stayed—with GOAT HERD for 1A is my night in a nutshell. By the time I threw in the towel (and here I’m just looking at the acrosses), I still had five all or partial blanks, and six completely wrong words. I’m sure the downs, as a result, were at least as ugly. This was after googling like a [insert favorite simile for desperate person]. For an hour. “Fail” with extreme prejudice.

In the interest of keeping myself honest, I report massive failure in the NW and substantial failure in the NE. I had TORTE, but so many don't have nuts that I took it out. Had GUN instead of GAT. Didn't see MOAN, but as to a MOAN being evidence, @Rex, notice how this word gets used in two different ways. 1) something that proves something else, 2) something that can help in forming a judgment. A MOAN is evidence in the second sense, not the first. (For something to be evidence in court it just needs to be relevant and probative and and.)

Semi-puzzle partner and I finished the NE corner with 'fever' for BESET, 'emy' for OMA, and 'men' for DEW. That gave us PAVE MOBLE and CARYNBAS. Looked (semi) ok to me. Yikes.

Scribbled in CHEROKEE, figuring maybe they had to migrate out of the Carolinas? That led to TANK not BOMB. Otherwise not too many problems, though I did think of GOAT MAMA, and first went for HIS'N HERS.

The original idea for this puzzle was very clear, unlike what Rex was wondering about for some others.

@ Bob K, Thanks, did not know that. I can't claim to know every country's medical acronyms.Looking back at all of the comments I think the clue for 1A was the cleverest double-cross to most of us.We smarty pants weren't going to be fooled by the kid/child misdirection and it was just a child after all.For those of us who don't get the Sunday Times tomorrow is Monday in Puzzleworld.

MILAN seemed like it must be right, but I had SEPTi and kept trying to get Lysol (BRACKISH saved me from going too far down that rabbit hole, but I kept wondering about it), so I finally googled the library to finish that section, and then the JLo song looking for my mistake. Which turned out to be SUr/rPN.

Fairly close to a finish, though, after I had exactly three answers from my first pass, AND I was successful on Friday, so that's a pretty good weekend for me.

Guilty confession: I got PASODOBLE from watching "So You Think You Can Dance."

This was on the easy-medium side for me mostly because I started off with STAGEMOM and changed RPN to LPN once I got STAMPEDE. It helped that both 15s were familiar. HYSON was the only iffy answer and it turned out to be right. Solid Sat. from Mr. White.

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)

This was another Saturday beat-down for me. I'm just not yet at a point in my crossword-solving career that I can solve a puzzle of this level of difficulty. And it's days like this when I question if I ever will be. I think I stared my computer screen for about 5 minutes before I entered even a single answer. Ouch! Kudos to anyone who solve this puzzle without help.

Easy Saturday, though I got two answers right that I didn't understand (hyson -- never heard of it -- and ateat which I parsed as "a teat"). But even though I've been to Brazil, I had sur instead of sul. When I wrote this, I knew in the back of my mind that this seemed wrong (the name of some states have "sul" I think) but I couldn't remember why, Irked that I missed this, my only mistake.

SFman, This puzzle gave me the satisfaction of the breadth of my knowledge (French periodic table, par example) and years of experience. Just being alive and aware as well as puzzling fairly frequently since the NYT first started publishing an edition in the SF Bay Area in 1980. I noticed at the Alameda tounament that you were sharper than I, yet maybe more narrowly focused. This Saturday puzzle cast its net more widely, and us slower folk reacted accordingly.

So very late to the puzzle conversation today. Add me as another who first entered GOATHERD...Bah. I worked most of the puzzle, but even after realizing that 1A was a *mom, I still had to google to get ARETHA at 17A, and a firm foothold on that corner. I entered SOOTY MOLD at one point for the plant disease. And in the end, I had an error with SUD. Even with the NW struggle, I liked the puzzle.

The last lines of a Petrarchian sonnet may or may not be an ENDRHYME. The second part of the sonnet - the sestet - has variable rhyme schemes. The Shakespearean sonnet always ends in a rhyming couplet. I'd have liked to see the Bard cited in the clue.

@Ben: That French teacher really said "à tout?" Tsk. Should have said "à tous."

Anyway, I hope everybody is having un bon weekend and will forgive me for being a curmudgeon (if a woman can qualify as such).

@ Gil, I don't think I'm sissified, if a female can be sissified, since I took a group of riders up into the Tetons when still in high school and was thrown near the top of the trail. The horse was caught and I was put back on for the descent -- but I came to half-way back down the trail, with a MOAN and query "Where am I?" My head recovered from having hit a rock and cleared up fairly quickly, but my lower right leg still has a hoof-shaped dent where I was stepped on! Rather an odd souvenir...

Messed the SUL/SUR/SUD SOuthern Brazilian Nurse thing...at one point had SAO.

Debated long time over JLo being ISREAL or IMREAL...why is she trying so hard?

Learned last year that PUMAS = COUGARS But I swear, I've never stalked a deer in my life.

ACH/NIE two German shout outs (literally!) for Ulrichkeit.

@meg @treedwellerAre you sure you don't mean "Dancing with the Stars"? (That where I learned about PASO DOBLE.)Till @Rex pointed out the PAS/PASO thing, I think I thought PASO in PASO DOBLE was a double Pass, like a bull running at a cape twice...but I guess the whole step thing makes more sense.My latest guilty pleasure: Jersey Shore. (Not to be confused with Pauly Shore, but almost!)

@chefwenNo longer officially your birthday in this here parts, but wanted to wish you a belated one!! Went to a 90 year old's bday today! Elzene was born in 1920 and took a horse and buggy to her one room school house, so... feel young! I know I did!

@anonymous 12:26You're quite right about human caddies not being permitted to hold your scorecards on a golf course but if you walk the course yourself pulling a golf cart as I do, the fancier golf carts are also called caddies - and, of course, you can clip your scorecard onto them.